by Brenda Joyce
And even as Criosaidh spoke, he saw the tears slipping down Tabitha’s face. She was lost in this battle—and he was afraid it was a terrible portent of the outcome. “No!” he roared, blasting the black witch again. This time, taken unawares, she gasped in pain and was driven back into the untouched wall, but it didn’t matter.
Tabitha went still, eyes wide, as the flames circled her.
He seized Criosaidh, shaking her, wanting to break her. “Stop the fire or die!”
She sneered at him and vanished.
Tabitha screamed.
In horror, he turned—and saw her lavender velvet gown on fire. And then his wife was engulfed in the flames, only a portion of her frightened face visible to him.
I love you…
He knew her so well. It had been two-hundred-and-fifty-two years since he had seduced her in her small loft in New York City and then taken her to Blayde—against her very stubborn will. She was his wife, his lover, his best friend and his greatest ally in the war on evil. She was his partner in every task, both great and small, and she was the mother of his children, the grandmother of his grandchildren. She had taught him love, compassion, humanity. He had never believed in love until she’d come into his life. He’d been ruthless and merciless until Tabitha.
He knew she meant to say more.
Just as he knew these were her last, dying words.
But she did not finish speaking. Instead, the fire erupted, reaching the tower roof, consuming her completely.
“Tabitha!” he screamed.
Then the fire was gone, and there was only the charred ruin of the tower room.
He could not breathe. He could not move. In shock, he stared.
Across the room, upon the floor, he saw the gold necklace she had worn for two-and-a-half centuries, the amulet he had given her. The talisman was an open palm, a pale moonstone glittering in its center.
It had survived the fire, untouched and unscarred; his wife, who had powerful magic, had not.
“No!” He leaped into time.
CHAPTER ONE
The Present
New York City
December 7, 2008
IT HAD BEEN a really quiet weekend. Tabby wasn’t sure what to make of that as she and her sister and a friend stood in line to pass through a security checkpoint at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her sister, Sam, had even gotten off early enough last night to go out to dinner. Tabby couldn’t recall the last time the two of them had been able to go out and have a few drinks and a great meal. It made her uneasy. She was waiting for the ax to fall.
Something huge was going to happen.
She was a Rose, and while she didn’t have the Sight like her cousin, Brie, she could feel the premonition in her bones.
“It is weird,” Sam said, as they filed toward the security inspector. “There were only four friggin’ pleasure crimes yesterday. Not that I’m complaining. But it was Saturday night.”
Although they were sisters, they were as different as night and day. Sam was hard and edgy, while Tabby was soft and classic. Two years younger than Tabby, Sam wore short, spiky platinum hair, had an Angelina Jolie body and the face to go with it. Tabby was used to the attention her sister always received. Every male they passed, young or old, gave her a second glance—male radar gone haywire. Tabby didn’t mind. She knew she was conservative and old-fashioned. Although it was Sunday, she wore a wool skirt, a cashmere V-neck and pearls. She didn’t even own a pair of jeans.
Sam was being gawked at now. The tall, young male turned his gaze to Tabby next, giving her the once-over. Tabby was used to that, too. She was an attractive woman; her sister simply overshadowed her.
“There was not one Rampage, not in any of the five boroughs,” Sam said. “I mean, it’s noon and I haven’t even been called in on a case.”
Tabby knew that her warrior sister, who was an agent at HCU, was bored. Sam was at her best when she was hunting on the city streets. But the Rampages were terrible crimes. Innocent victims were burned, medieval style, at the stake. As eerie as the sudden decline in violence was, she should not be complaining.
“Why are you so uptight? I saw who you met up with at Trenza,” Kit said to Sam, smiling. “She was with Young, Dark and Hot.”
“Very young, very hot and very, very good.” Sam smiled.
“I don’t know why they never have friends,” Kit complained, but she winked at Tabby. She was slim, fair and dark-haired. Tabby had never seen her wear a stitch of makeup—she didn’t have to. Her siren’s face and sensuously buff body hid a brilliant intensity and resolve. Like Sam, her first love was the war on evil. She was one of the most serious and determined women Tabby had ever met, but Tabby didn’t blame her. Her twin sister had died in Jerusalem in Kit’s arms, the victim of demonic violence. Sometimes Tabby thought she might still be mourning Kelly. Kit worked at HCU, too—it was how she’d met Sam.
But Sam said, “He had a friend. You cut out before you could meet him.”
Kit shrugged negligently. “Had to hit the gym and take care of the bod.”
Sam snorted.
Tabby wasn’t sure if Kit was as old-fashioned as she was, or if she was simply too obsessed with work to get involved, but she had known Kit for about a year, and she was pretty certain Kit was as celibate as she was. The joke was a front and they all knew it. It was okay—they both lived vicariously through Sam. A stranger might be appalled by the way Sam used men, but Tabby was proud of her. She was a powerful and gorgeous woman; she was the one to say yes or no; she was the one who did the dumping. Sam would never have her heart broken. She would be spared that.
Tabby was relieved when the slight aching in her breast did not suddenly pierce through her heart and soul. The divorce no longer hurt. The betrayals no longer hurt. It was almost two years since she’d learned the extent of her ex-husband’s lies and adultery. She’d given him all of her love, and she’d meant every word of their marriage vows. It was the kind of woman she was. He hadn’t meant one damned word.
She intended to learn from her mistakes. Randall hadn’t been the love of her life after all. He had been a Wall Street investor—a high roller and a player. He’d cheated on her from start to finish, and to make the cliché just perfect, she’d been the last to find out. She was never going near that charismatic macho type again.
But sometimes, especially recently, she wished she was a bit more like her sister when it came to men. She did not want to even think that she might be lonely or that she needed the kind of intimacy she wasn’t sure she’d ever have again, but the evenings were getting harder and harder to deal with. She’d started dating again, being really careful to go out with intellectuals and artists, but it felt as if she was simply going through the motions. And maybe she was. When it came to dating and sex, she was the exact opposite of her sister. If she wasn’t in love, it wasn’t happening. She didn’t turn on easily, either. Maybe love and passion weren’t in the cards for her. She was twenty-nine already, and beginning to think she’d better focus on her Destiny as a Rose woman.
“You know, I wish you’d let me set you up with the new guy at CDA,” Sam said.
Tabby smiled a bit grimly at her. She’d met MacGregor once, when he and Sam had been leaving the Center for Demonic Activity Agency together. “Definitely not,” she said, meaning it. The agent had had macho written all over him.
“Let her explore the Beta side of life,” Kit said, her eyes wide with innocence. “Who knows? Maybe she’ll find a match made in some kind of odd, metro heaven.”
Tabby felt a pang, but she smiled brightly and said, “That’s the plan.”
Kit sobered and touched her arm. “I’m sorry. I never met Randall and I shouldn’t tease you for going out with his polar opposite.”
“It’s okay,” Tabby said. She smiled firmly. “What’s meant to be is meant to be. Maybe the love of my life is a poet with a Ph.D.”
Sam choked. “Over my dead body.” Then she looked closely at Tabby. “Are you o
kay?”
Sam always knew when something was really wrong. “It’s still hard.”
“Yeah, it is,” Sam said, and they both knew they were referring to their cousin, Brie. Kit probably knew it, too, but she pretended not to hear them, moving as the line progressed.
The Rose women were special. Each had her own Destiny, tied into the war on evil. For generations, the Rose women had been using their unusual powers to aid and abet good. It had only been three months since Brie had left them to redeem the Wolf of Awe. The year before, their best friend Allie had also vanished. Although Allie wasn’t related to them, they had become friends with her as children. That had been Fate, too—it turned out that she was a powerful Healer. Each woman had gone to embrace her Destiny in the past, because it had been time to do so. That was how the universe worked. It was a fundamental Wisdom in the Book of Roses, which had been passed down through the generations of Rose women.
Tabby missed them both, sometimes terribly, but she was also happy for them because Allie and Brie were hardly alone in the Middle Ages. Their Destinies had included powerful, nearly immortal partners—Highlanders who battled at their sides, as driven and committed as they were to the war on evil. But their absence had left a gaping hole in their lives. Sam had helped fill the void by going to work at HCU, the Historic Crimes Unit of CDA, a clandestine government agency dedicated to fighting the evil preying on society. Sam’s boss, Nick Forrester, ran HCU with an iron fist but he could be counted on to back them up. And so could Kit. But it wasn’t the same without Allie and Brie.
There was no defying Destiny. Tabby’s Destiny was magic. Every generation of Rose women had a Slayer, a Healer and a Witch. She had been practicing her craft since she was fourteen—the year her mother had died, the victim of a demonic pleasure crime. There was one big fat problem, though. Rose women usually came into their powers very, very swiftly once their Destiny was made known. Apparently, Tabby was the exception to that rule. Although she’d been practicing magic since adolescence, her powers were still erratic and, once in a while, too weak to do any good. It simply didn’t make any sense.
But as the Book of Roses said, there was a reason for everything.
Kit said, “After the gym, I went back to HCU. I was digging around in some older case files. That last Rampage has been bothering me. There were only three in the gang.”
“They were doped up on a drug we’ve never seen before,” Sam said quietly.
HCU’s jurisdiction was the past—all past demonic activity, even if centuries old. Because so many of today’s demons came from previous centuries, HCU’s agents worked closely with CDA. Rarely could a present-day crime be solved without HCU’s expertise. Tabby had already heard about last week’s Rampage. A couple had been burned at the stake in one of Manhattan’s most posh neighborhoods. These terrible murders were usually committed between midnight and dawn, with an entire gang present. But it had only been 8:00 p.m. and only three gang members had been there, two males and a female. Were they becoming bolder? Had it even been a genuine Rampage?
The press had dubbed the crimes “witch burnings,” a label Tabby particularly disliked, because the victims were average men, women and children of all ages, races, sizes and shapes. But then, evil rarely discriminated—except, of course, when it came to pleasure crimes. Then the most innocent and beautiful were chosen. The witch burnings had instilled so much fear into the general public that no one seemed to care that seventy percent of all murders were still pleasure crimes. What was really scary was how vicious the gangs of possessed kids had become.
They’d once been ghetto gang members or normal kids gone missing. Evil preyed on them, seducing these gang members, offering them power in return for their souls, and then directing them to commit violence, brutality, bestiality and anarchy. The possessed gangs were out of control, ruling the city streets through fear and might. Gang warfare was no longer “in.” Now the gangs often worked together to hunt down civilians, cruelly and sadistically. Very few “normal” gangs remained in the country now.
“Something’s been bothering me about the Rampages, across the board,” Kit said. “I feel like I’ve missed a really glaring clue.”
“I’ll go back to HCU with you,” Sam decided, “and we can check it out.”
They had reached the security checkpoint. Tabby smiled at the guard as Sam flipped her government ID. Sam’s messenger bag was loaded with weapons, and she carried a stiletto up her sleeve and a Beretta in a shoulder holster. She would never make it through the checkpoint. Kit flipped a similar ID. Although they were government issued, neither Kit nor Sam were Feds, as the IDs claimed. But CDA was so clandestine that only the top levels of the CIA, the FBI and the Secret Service worked with its agents.
As they passed through the checkpoint, Sam and Kit were both so thoughtful that Tabby had the feeling they were ready to cut out on their plans for the afternoon. She would have to wander around the exhibit by herself, and return alone to the loft she shared with Sam. She’d float around it in the same solitude she did every night—except when she was out with some sweet guy she had no real interest in. It was lonely—Sam was almost never there—but she’d deal the same way she always did. She’d outline tomorrow’s curriculum, and then work on her spells.
“So which way to the Wisdom of the Celts?” Sam asked.
Tabby smiled back, relieved. Sam knew she needed company. “Up those stairs,” she said, nodding.
The huge front hall was terribly crowded. Every New Yorker knew that visiting the Met on the weekend was a really dumb idea. They started across the granite floored hall, dwarfed by the columns and arches, before going up the broad staircase to the first level of exhibits.
There was no line.
They exchanged looks as they approached the glass displays. Tabby said, “This is too weird. There should have been a half-hour wait, at least.”
Kit murmured, “It’s an exhibit on medieval Ireland. If you ask me, medieval Scotland and Ireland are peas in the same pod.”
Allie and Brie were in medieval Scotland, with Highlanders who belonged to a secret society dedicated to the protection of Innocence. “Are you saying that you think we’re meant to go in here? That the exhibit is related to the Brotherhood?”
“The earliest Scots came from Dalriada—which is Ireland.”
Tabby barely heard them. She realized her heart was thundering as she left them debating the odd lack of a line and walked over to a large glass display case. Inside, there were numerous artifacts and objects. She vaguely saw a large sword with an intricately designed hilt, and a pair of daggers, a brooch and a cup. But her gaze was drawn to the necklace there, instead.
A terrible tension filled her as she stared at the gold chain and the pendant hanging from it. It was a talisman in the shape of an open palm, a pale stone glittering from the palm’s center.
Tabby’s pulse skittered wildly in her throat. When she touched the hollow of her collarbone, where she wore pearls and a small key on a chain, her skin there felt far too warm. She felt a bit dizzy, faint.
“Are you all right?” Sam asked.
“I feel odd,” Tabby said, realizing she was perspiring. She leaned forward to read about the amulet.
It was dated to the early thirteenth century, but had been found in 1932 among the ruins of Melvaig Castle in the northeastern Highlands of Scotland. It had somehow survived the legendary battle of An Tùir-Tara, which meant the Burning Tower. On June 19, 1550, a terrible fire had destroyed the central tower of Melvaig Castle. Most historians could not decide on the cause of the inferno, because no weapons or other signs of a battle had been found. A blaze that extensive should have been caused by medieval warfare. The most common hypothesis was that the fire was the result of treachery, the kind so often seen in the ongoing clan war between the MacDougalls of Skye and their blood enemies, the Macleods of Loch Gairloch. That bloody and bitter clan feud seemed to have originated in 1201, when a fire set by the MacDougalls razed the
Macleod stronghold at Blayde to the ground, destroying the Macleod chief, William the Lion. Very few survivors were left, but amongst them was Macleod’s fourteen-year-old son.
Tabby reeled. The words blurred before her eyes. She could not breathe; she started to choke on the lack of air.
The Macleods of Loch Gairloch….
His fourteen-year-old son….
She finally breathed, gulping in air. Were the Macleods important somehow? Did she know the clan? Had they been a part of Rose history? Why did that boy seem important to her? She almost felt as if the clan name rang a bell, as if she needed to reach out to that boy. Yet she did not know anyone named Macleod. Her family came from Narne, in the western Highlands.
But she remained shaken. She could almost see a fourteen-year-old boy, covered in blood and choking on grief and guilt. And suddenly so much conflicting emotion consumed her that she could not breathe at all.
Tabby went still.
She could see the inferno.
The sky was pitch-black, and an entire castle was ablaze. There was dread, fury.
The images shifted. The sky was a brilliant robin’s-egg blue. Only a soaring tower burned….
The terrible emotions intensified. Tabby cried out, rocked by the rage and anguish, the fear, the horror, and even the love.
And there was evil, too.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked urgently. “You need to sit down!”
Tabby barely heard her sister. Tabby did not have the power to sense evil, but evil was beckoning her now. It wanted her. Tabby strained to see, horrified and mesmerized at once. And from the raging inferno on that sunny summer day, a dark fog came, slithering over the blazing tower, consuming it. Slowly the dark mists began shape-shifting into a woman—a faceless woman cloaked in swirling black.
“Tabby, damn it!”
The evil woman beckoned. Tabby couldn’t see her face but she knew she was smiling the cold, lustful smile of pure evil. Then she realized that she was afraid.
Tabby blinked. The darkly cloaked woman became clearer. Night-black hair spilled over her cloak, framing her pale beautiful face. She somehow knew this woman—a black witch or a demon. It was déjà vu. Yet they’d never met.
